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This is the tenth Grants in Australia research report. This survey-based resource for Australian grantmakers and grantseekers has been produced regularly since 2006, and is the biggest of its type in Australia. An output of Our Community's Innovation Lab, the report is part of an ongoing research project that charts the development of the field of grantmaking from the grantseeking community's perspective. The goal of this report is to create a snapshot of grantmaking in Australia, to examine developing trends in the field, and to inspire and enable more successful grantseeking and better grantmaking.

Millions of people in Illinois experience poverty or are living on the brink. That societal position keeps opportunities out of reach and nearly guarantees worse outcomes in every quality of life domain—making ALL of us worse off.
This fact sheet on poverty, income, and health insurance coverage in Illinois and the Chicago region, was created using the Census Bureau's release of local American Community Survey data.
The poverty rate for the United States was 12.3% in 2017. There were 39.7 million people in poverty nationwide. The poverty rate is not significantly different from the pre-recession level of 12.5% in 2007. In 2017, 1.6 million Illinoisans were in poverty ─ a rate of 12.6%. Additionally, 2.0 million Illinoisans are near poor and economically insecure with incomes between 100% and 199% of the federal poverty threshold.

Citizens' Committee for Children of New York (CCC) has worked over the last year to gather quantitative and qualitative data about the North Shore of Staten Island to provide a comprehensive assessment of the needs of children and families in the area, as well as the resources available to them. CCC's model for community-based research utilizes existing government data on child and family well-being and complements it by mapping community assets and elevating the voices of service providers and community members through a participatory research process. This work builds on our experience maintaining the nation's most comprehensive municipal-level database illustrating the well-being of children and families in New York City, Keeping Track Online.
In this report, we highlight both welcomed and worrisome trends districtwide and across the seven neighborhoods that make up the North Shore—Grymes Hill-Park Hill, Mariner's Harbor, Port Richmond, Stapleton, St. George-New Brighton, West Brighton, and Westerleigh—and compare these outcomes against borough and citywide averages.
In order to address the challenges faced by children and families on the North Shore—and in Staten Island broadly—residents and service providers have come together to engage in efforts to improve outcomes across the range of issues impacting child and family well-being. This includes several collective impact initiatives, a term describing a systematic approach to collaboration among organizations aligned by a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and support from a backbone organization tasked with coordinating the partnership.
CCC's data collection and participatory research process are designed to inform and support efforts in the community to improve well-being for children and families. We believe that reliable data is a foundational element of effective advocacy, and that community engagement elevating the voices and concerns of residents is essential in identifying the challenges that need to be addressed. We are hopeful this report will be a useful tool as residents and service providers continue working to improve outcomes for children and families on the North Shore.

It is ten years since we were at the peak of the financial crisis — the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an investment bank. This sent tremors throughout the world, and media outlets began talking about a return of the Great Depression. While the fear generated by politicians and media was able to get enough support for saving the financial industry, the country was left to deal with the painful fallout from a collapsed housing bubble. Millions lost their homes and jobs. Even a decade later, by some measures, most notably prime-age employment rates, the labor market has still not recovered.
This discussion makes several points concerning the bubble and its collapse. First and foremost, it argues that the primary story of the downturn was a collapsed housing bubble, not the financial crisis. Prior to the downturn, the housing bubble had been driving the economy, pushing residential construction to record levels as a share of GDP. The housing wealth effect also led to a consumption boom. The saving rate reached a record low. When the bubble burst, it was inevitable that these sources of demand would disappear and there were no easy options for replacing them, except very large government budget deficits.

Implementing the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model boosts employment outcomes for transition-age youth facing barriers to employment. LifeWorks, a non-profit organization serving transition-age youth and their families in Austin, TX, realized that workforce models popular within the youth development field may not address the significant and complex challenges faced by their participants. LifeWorks staff began to look toward behavioral health approaches to employment and discovered the Individual Placement & Support model. This case study discusses how IPS offered LifeWorks a new approach to workforce support for youth that might better address the types of challenges their participants faced.

Provides national, state, and local statistics and data about affordable housing, family status of homeless households, living wage jobs, tax inequality, un- and under-employment, the poverty rate, and other exacerbating factors that feed into and exacerbate homelessness.

This infographic highlights current trends in how well the homeless service system is connecting people exiting the system with employment and income. The infographic is based on an analysis of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Continuum of Care System Performance Measure data from 2016.

An innovative new model pioneered by affordable housing finance companies (AHFCs) has made home ownership attainable for millions of low-income informal sector customers in urban India. There are now 26 such AHFCs with a combined loan portfolio of $4.1+ billion in India, who have financed over 230,000 houses over the last decade. Due to the availability of equity and debt, and potential for geographic expansion, this market is likely to continue to grow rapidly. This report examines the current state of the market and provides recommendations for facilitating greater scale so that even more households can own or improve their homes.

Northern Manhattan reflects the diversity and cultural richness of New York City as a whole, while also reflecting the city's challenges, including pockets of high poverty and the associated risks to child and family well-being. In this report, we focus on the community districts of West Harlem, Central Harlem, and Washington Heights, and where possible, provide data on the eight neighborhoods within these districts. Our findings suggest the neighborhoods of northern Manhattan each face unique challenges. Manhattanville in West Harlem struggles with the lowest levels of employment among adults and lowest average household income; Central Harlem has the highest rates of homelessness and most worrisome child and adult health outcomes; and Washington Heights faces high levels of linguistic isolation and low levels of adult educational attainment. Though specific neighborhoods have unique challenges, there are also issues that are universal across the neighborhoods of northern Manhattan. The poverty rate in each northern Manhattan neighborhood is higher than the citywide rate, and at schools in each neighborhood (with the exception of Morningside Heights in West Harlem) students perform well below the citywide level in state-mandated English Language Arts and Math exams. The data also point to areas in which there has been significant improvement in northern Manhattan. The uninsured rate for both children and adults has decreased substantially—faster than it has citywide—and only 1% of children in West Harlem and Washington Heights lack health insurance. The teen birth rate has dropped considerably in each district, at a faster rate than it has citywide. Poverty rates are higher—and average incomes are lower—in northern Manhattan compared to New York City as a whole. However, each northern Manhattan community district has experienced greater increases in average income—and larger decreases in poverty—than the city as a whole over the last several years. Amidst the good news is the troubling fact that children and families facing multiple risks to well-being are disproportionately black and Latino. Where possible, we identify disparities in outcomes for these and other demographic groups, such as immigrant and single-parent households. Findings from these analyses point to the stubbornness of unequal outcomes, and the persistent need to further expose and combat discrimination in all its forms. In our research, service providers and community members pointed to several issues that should be addressed to improve child and family well-being in northern Manhattan. For example, both caregivers and youth are seeking more opportunities that will allow them to be economically secure and upwardly mobile. Residents feel they need greater protections in maintaining stable housing, and they expressed a need to eliminate access barriers— including lack of information and language—to ensure greater ease and accessibility in obtaining needed and desired programs and services. There was a desire for a more equitable distribution of resources in schools and more opportunities for parental involvement in their children's education. And community members felt they could benefit from shared spaces and co-located services where multiple needs and interests can be addressed. Below, we further explore the major themes that arose in our research and provide broad, community-informed recommendations to address the issues raised.